The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (14 page)

“You don't want to listen to this,” she said. “And I don't want to talk about it.”

“Come on,” I said. “I'll walk you home.”

She turned her back to me, hugging her arms to herself. “In a minute,” she said. Her voice quavered, telling me she was close to crying, when she said, “I just want to stay with him for a minute longer.”

I held her hand as we stood and watched the moon cast shimmers on the pond, the night sounds loud now that we had fallen quiet.

Though I insisted on walking her home, I didn't have the courage to get anywhere near her house, just watched her from a few doors down to make sure she got in okay. As I followed the now-familiar path home, I thought about a girl who had lost half of her family before she was eighteen years old, and for the first time in months, I felt pity for someone other than myself.

 

20

By Monday the whole town seemed to know by instant osmosis about the drama between Penny and me after the football game. I assumed Penny must have been the one to say something about our failed romantic moment by the lake. I couldn't imagine Chief Perry blabbing anything about it, and I knew I hadn't told anyone. Maybe Penny had told her girlfriends about it. By the looks I was getting from my schoolmates, I knew the story had already made the rounds to everyone. People looked at me as if I were a ghost—already dead or soon to be.

I almost didn't want to face the lunch hour with Don and the dork squad. For one thing, hanging with them was kind of boring. When they talked about girls, it was almost always about girls who didn't really exist, like Cortana and Chell from video games they played. And for another, sitting with Don and his buddies was my daily reminder that I was permanently relegated to the lamest social clique in school. Not only that, but I was the most pathetic and newest member of the lamest social clique.

Don asked about Friday night, the outcome of me giving Penny a ride home. I told him the things Penny had said about Grant, that we kissed but nothing else. I left out the part about Chief Perry cock-blocking me and about his patrol car escorting us home.

“And Grant already knows about it,” he said, his brow wrinkling in concern. “You're an idiot. No one else in Ashland is dumb enough to make the moves on Penny.”

“I didn't make any moves. I don't have any moves,” I said impatiently, and truer words were never spoken. “All I did was give her a ride home.
She
kissed
me.
”

“Are you trying to tell me that Penny Olson date-raped you?” Don asked skeptically. “Is that what you're saying? That she forced herself on you and you were just an unwilling participant?”

“That's not what I said.”

“What about Del?” Aaron asked.

“What about her? I mean, we hang out … sometimes … but there's nothing going on between us.” Aaron and Don exchanged skeptical glances but said nothing about my protests. I was more concerned about the threat from Tony on Saturday than my feelings regarding Delilah, which were, as always, a mess of confusion. Half the time she was cutting me down in that ironic way she had, always making me wrong no matter how I interpreted what she was saying. The way a girl's mind works is like chaos theory: the only predictable factor is unpredictability. “What's the story with Delilah and that guy Tony?” I asked suddenly, remembering the way Tony and Delilah had interacted.

“They used to go out,” Don said. “Del used to hang out with Grant and all of those other douche bags. She broke up with Tony after her brother died. It was a long time before she talked to anyone after that. I think later, Tony wanted her back, but she's kind of a loner now, has been since Jeremy died.”

“You mean she was different before Jeremy died?” I asked.

“Very different. For one thing she used to brush her hair, dressed like a girl. She would even smile. Guys were always asking her out, even Grant, but she never really gave anyone the time of day. Girls wanted to be her friend so they could get close to Jeremy. She was really popular, in fact. But that all changed after Jeremy died. She and Jeremy were pretty close. Practically the whole town turned out for his funeral. Everyone came. Jeremy was the only person from Ashland we lost in Iraq or Afghanistan. At least so far. Everyone came to the funeral except for Del. She didn't leave her house for two weeks.”

“Her brother—you knew him?” I asked.

“Jeremy? Sure,” Don said. “Small town. Everybody knows everybody.”

“Delilah told me. About Jeremy. He would have been twenty-one yesterday.”

“Really?” Don asked. “I mean, really, she told you that? I'm surprised. She never talks about him. Did she tell you why Jeremy joined the army?”

“No,” I said, and it had not occurred to me to wonder about it before. I figured that's just what boys from small towns in America's heartland did. Go off to war.

“I don't know how it all went down, but the story goes that Jeremy was running away. That was how he ended up in the army.”

“Running away?” I asked. “Like running away from home?”

“Maybe,” Don said with a shrug. “Running away from home, from life, from Ashland. Take your pick. We all fantasize about it. Getting out of this town. Chief Perry is a strict guy. Jeremy was a little wild. Not bad. Not into drugs or anything like that. Just a little out there.”

“So the police chief's son runs off to war to get away from his dad and ends up killed,” I said thoughtfully. “I'd almost feel bad for Chief Perry if he weren't such an angry son of a bitch. He's been out to get me since I got here.”

“Well, you do have a lot of weird shirts,” Aaron said. “You aren't exactly going to blend in, dressing the way you do.”

“Your problem, Luke,” Don said around a mouthful of Rice Krispies Treats, “is that you are caught up in the classic Archie dilemma.”

“The what?” I asked with a frown.

“Archie,” he said with some impatience, like I was a complete moron. “As in the
Archie
comics. Betty and Veronica.”

Aaron was nodding his head knowingly as Don spoke.

“Archie has two girls who are into him,” Don said as he leaned forward earnestly and put both elbows on the table. “Betty, the girl next door who is nice and down-to-earth and not stuck on her looks, and Veronica, who's catty and mean and a total bitch but rich and beautiful. Archie is always falling all over himself to get with Veronica and keep her happy, but the girl he should be in love with is Betty. She cares about him and just wants to make him happy.”

“Is Betty ugly?” I asked, and Don grimaced.

“She's a cartoon, Luke.” This with a weary roll of his eyes. “But no, I don't think she's supposed to be ugly. Anyway, Del is not ugly. She's totally hot.”

“Delilah has never had anything nice to say to me,” I said. “She's stubborn and difficult to get along with. She makes me nuts. Delilah is not a Betty.”

“She's supposed to make you nuts,” Don said, his voice rising to a squeak. “That's what girls do. But Penny is just like Veronica. She doesn't really care about you as a person. You think she's so in love with Grant? She just wants to be with him because he's the best-looking guy in school and his dad has a lot of money.”

“How do you know?” I shot back. “Penny's not like that. She's nice.”

Don looked unconvinced and only shrugged. “You don't have to listen to me. I'm just saying that you should appreciate your relationship with Del. She's awesome, even if you can't see it because you're so infatuated with Penny.”

“Delilah and I don't have a relationship,” I said, maybe too forcefully. “I told you. There's nothing going on between us.”

The conversation with Don and Aaron left me feeling irritated, though I wasn't exactly sure why. Delilah was a sore point for me. Sure, she was pretty and more like a guy friend to me than any girl I had ever known, but every time I was with her she did her best to trip me up and make me feel like an idiot. And her dad was a total nightmare. Even if I did want to have a relationship with Delilah, her dad would make it impossible. Just like Grant made it impossible for me to be with Penny. If I wanted a girlfriend, I was going to have to find some other prospect.

 

21

At the garage that afternoon there wasn't much to do. I sat and chewed the fat with Roger and Tiny while they drank their afternoon beers. When the sun dipped in the sky they saddled up and rode home and I was finally motivated to do something. I put away any stray tools, loaded shop rags into the ancient washing machine that would clang angrily through the spin cycle, and was just going to shut down the lights in the garage bay when a car pulled up out front. The headlights burned through the slitted windows in the bay door, but that was all I could see. A few beats after the headlights extinguished, there was the tinkle of bells as the office door opened.

“Roger's gone for the day,” I called out across the bay.

There was no answer to my greeting, but then Grant Parker stepped through the office door into the garage.

“Hey, asshole,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, I'm not here for an oil change,” Grant said, and stepped down into the recessed floor of the garage. He moved toward me deliberately and I was suddenly afraid.

“I'm just closing up. You shouldn't be here.”

“I'll go wherever I want, whenever I want to,” Grant said. “I don't know what the rules are like in the big city where you come from, but here, if you make a move on another guy's girl, you're going to pay for it.”

“I didn't make a move on anyone,” I said. “I don't have any moves.”

“Boy, you got that right,” Grant said.

“You've been a dick to me since the first day I got here,” I said. I sounded like a whiny baby now, but it was hard to keep my voice level and stay calm.

“What? Are you still mad about that whole cow-tipping thing?” he asked scornfully. “It was a joke. You can't take a joke?”

“It wasn't my idea of a good joke.”

“So, what?” he asked. “You got it in for me now? Is that it? You think you're a tough guy.”

“No,” I answered honestly.

It seemed that the talking portion of our program was now over. Grant shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on a pile of tires waiting to go for recycling. “I'm going to make you wish you were never born.”

If you've ever been punched in the face, you know that the chances of getting hit a couple of times and coming back with your own slugs isn't really the way it goes down. You get hit in the face a couple of times and that's it. You're out. Down for the count.

At that moment I was completely focused on avoiding Grant's fist as it came flying at my face. He lunged for me and I dodged left. It never even occurred to me to take him on, to swing my fist. I just ran like a coward. I spun on my heel, looking wildly around for a tool or something else to use as a weapon. Not that I intended to use it on him, but I thought that if I was holding a wrench or a crowbar, I'd be able to scare him off.

In the eternity between him lunging for me and me recovering my balance, there was a bloodcurdling scream, a loud clang, like we were trapped together inside an enormous bell, and then silence. The silence was so complete I could hear my own breath and the roar of adrenaline in my ears. My breath caught and I held it for a long minute. The world swam in front of my eyes, and I may have blacked out for a second. My conscious awareness had not caught up with what my subconscious already knew.

Grant was gone, had disappeared like a magician, without the telltale puff of smoke.

I'm not sure how much time passed before I worked up the nerve to move to the edge of the grease pit, the hole in the garage floor that opened to the work area below. I couldn't bring myself to look down into the mouth that had gaped with silence since Grant's fall.

Look. Just take one quick peek. You don't have to keep looking, but just take one glance, to confirm what we already know.

I can't. Can't look.

Yes, you can. On the count of three.

Oh, Jesus.

Ready? One … two …

Human bodies, for all their athletic ability, grace, and amazing feats, can only look like that when they are dead. Legs and arms don't turn in those unnatural angles when there is a living presence inside them.

Grant Parker had lunged for me, had not calculated my cowardice, had thought his body would meet the resistance of another person almost his equal in size and weight … and had missed. He had plunged headfirst into the grease pit, his head connecting with the air compressor that lay like a monster coiled in its lair.

“Dead.” The word played through my mind over and over again until it lost all meaning. Life had no meaning, and I wished suddenly that the fairy tales my dad told each Sunday were true, that there was something to believe in.

Had I been a character in a movie, or had I any presence of mind to do what was right, I would have run down to the lower level and felt for a pulse, attempted to cajole life back into his body with CPR or mouth-to-mouth or anything else I had been taught in various health classes I'd sat through in school. But I knew he was without salvation, knew it the way you know the sky is blue or that the Earth turns on its axis.

I spun quickly on my heel, unable to look at Grant Parker's lifeless body for another second, though the image was burned onto my retinas forever. I turned, so suddenly that the room spun crazily, my hand clapped over my mouth. Vomit ejected from my mouth with such force that it sprayed between my fingers.

And that was the last thing I knew for a long while.

 

22

Grant Parker wasn't dead.

He was seriously fucked up. But not dead.